Sean Wotherspoon, a collector, designer and Gap’s Vintage Curator, has put together his first limited drop that will be available on gap.com and at The Grove L.A. Gap store on Tuesday. The line revisits Gap items from the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s, spanning logo T-shirts, shirting, skirts, shorts, denim dresses, jeans and outerwear available in sizes XS to XL.
The items retail from $55 to $90, and it’s the start of several projects planned throughout the year.
For the limited-edition offering, Wotherspoon sourced vintage pieces from around the world. A renowned vintage collection and lifelong Gap fan, Wotherspoon’s mother worked at a Gap store in the ’90s and he was dressed head to toe in the brand as a young boy, so he called it a “full-circle moment.”
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“A lot of the vintage Gap is coming from a few different places,” said Wotherspoon, who was contacted by WWD during a visit to Germany. “One of them being my personal collection, which is my archive in L.A. that I’ve been amassing for the last handful of years. A lot comes from vintage warehouses that I source from in L.A. Just one hour ago, I went to a vintage store in Stuttgart [Germany] that’s been holding a bunch of vintage Gap for me, and I’m buying a bunch from them. I travel a lot for work and was just in Tokyo a couple of months ago getting a bunch more Gap vintage between Osaka and Kyoto. As I travel, it’s finding the vegan food and the vintage clothes. I try to sniff it out in whatever city I’m in.”
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“It’s been cool having the project with Gap because usually I’m just buying stuff for no reason,” he added.
The Vintage Gap x Sean Wotherspoon collection will contain individual pieces. “Everything more or less is one of one. The sizes vary, something might be faded more than another one. I’m finding a lot of cool stuff actually that has repairs or embellishments on it. I think that adds a really cool level of personality,” he said.
He added that he just found these early ’90s women’s denim Gap shorts and someone had embroidered flowers, grass and a sun on them. “They’re actually pretty cool,” he said.
He said what turns him on most is the flannels, the denim and “anything with stripes.”
“I’m just so obsessed with Gap’s different stripes. I really love the sweatshirts too, and the Gap fleece, just looking for those classic heritage items,” he said.
Asked if he’s scouting kids’ clothes too, he said, “I’ll immediately bring this up after this call. I’m so excited about the adult clothing, we haven’t talked about kids. I have two kids myself and I very much want them to be Gap kids so I think doing a kids’ collection would be really fun. Possibly in the next program,” Wotherspoon said.
The Vintage Gap x Sean Wotherspoon collection is in two parts: The first is the vintage part and the second part will be new items he’s designing based on his favorite vintage items.
“The vintage right now I’m picking it and sorting it and we’re kind of defining what stores it’ll go into. A lot of it will go into the Grove store. We’ll be doing a section on the Gap website, putting the Vintage Gap x Sean Wotherspoon in. It will all be exclusively through Gap,” he said. The pieces will have a Gap label, but will have SW hangtags.
Pieces are priced around what they originally sold for, Wotherspoon said. “The prices are close to the original retail. The Gap anoraks and windbreakers were kind of a price point in the ’90s, but nowadays they’ve become some of their top tier items. Our whole point is accessibility and not really to gouge on prices. We’re really doing our best to source it for a good price, offer it at a good price and increase the ability for people to walk into a Gap store and buy an original ’90s piece of Gap or a ’70s piece,” he said.
Wotherspoon said the vintage pieces are designed differently than items today.
“You’ll see a lot of the similar silhouettes, but the ’90s styles will fit a little baggier, and are more relevant to what people are wearing today. Overall, you’ll see a little more personality on them, whether it’s a fade, or little rips on the collar, or cracking on the print, or embellishments or customizations from a previous owner. Maybe they sewed a patch on them to repair them,” he said.
So far, he’s picked close to 400 items.
Surprisingly, he said it’s been really hard to find women’s Gap. “Women must holding onto them. It’s nowhere to be found. I found some great women’s Gap vintage, but I’m striving to find more,” he said.
The most expensive item he’s found so far is a late ’90s or early 2000s Gap leather trucker jacket in camel brown, he said. It will probably be $250 but it won’t be going into this initial offering, he noted.
Wotherspoon has been an American sneaker designer, collector, store owner and YouTube series creator. He designed one of the most popular sneakers of 2018, the Nike Air Max 1/97. He is also a cofounder of Round Two Vintage in Los Angeles.